requiem for a dream
by solararity
Summary: They told her it was a gift. She knew it was a curse. And she was stuck with it forever—this absolute atrocity permanently melded with her shoulder—a limb made not of flesh and bone, but of hissing pistons and gleaming metal. AU Elsanna.


**notes/** ooh elsa and anna, the fucking cuties. *melts* / steampunk dystopia, because why not? / heavy influences from _stormdancer_

**disclaimer/** i own nothing.

**warning/** elsanna, although no incest / **transhumanism themes**: if this concept conflicts with any of your views, then i suggest you stop here right now / in any case, dl;dr

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**requiem for a dream**

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_(screaming in a broken memory)_

**/**

[**PROLOGUE**]

A drive.

It's the reason that fuels every story, isn't it?

**...**

Apparently, humans didn't use to meld their bodies with metal. They stayed the way as nature had intended them to be, made entirely of flesh and blood and bone.

Elsa knew that this whole craze, this abnormal infatuation with metal had started out small and was well-intentioned. Repairing shattered joints and bones with sheets of molded metal inserted underneath the skin, attached to bones. Completely harmless, merely used for the betterment of mankind.

Then, of course, people decided that guns and nuclear bombs weren't enough for their own,_ individual_ protection and then started molding their entire bodies with the silver plates, whether they needed it or not—some twisted, sick form of those metaphorical medieval knights in shining armor. Reinforcing their flesh with a thick sheen of metallic skin, enclosing their heads within insectoid helmets that had a single, colored rectangle glowing in the center of the place where their faces should have been.

Production of these metal suits, these metal skins exploded and became a veritable, booming economy overnight. Factories spat poisonous plumes of dusty excrement into the air.

Elsa had read stories of how the skies used to be colored a beautiful, azure blue. Yet when she looked up, all she saw was an ugly gray-brown.

_Humans really were quite selfish creatures,_ she miserably thought when she was alone.

Not that she was one to speak.

Her current "right arm" didn't exactly pop out of the womb along with her.

(She never asked for it, though.)

**...**

She lost her right arm the day she turned eight.

She didn't remember how, didn't remember why. Just _did_.

They told her she was in an accident, that her father and mother never made it. They told her that her right arm had been severed to the shoulder, nothing more than a horribly scarred, bleeding stump when the Medics found her.

The recorded reason for why she was given her a new arm (without even asking if she wanted it) was because she would have died without one.

Of course, this was a blatant lie if the world had ever heard one, and utter bullshit, because they assumed she did.

She didn't. Her parents would have never approved.

Elsa never wanted to be half a machine.

**...**

School was nothing more then a fucking joke, because wherever Anna happened to be, all she heard is this:

_clank._

_clankclankSCREEECH._

_clankclankclank._

That was it. Clanking noises. The obnoxious sounds of fucking _metal_ shrieking a horrible tune when they rubbed against each other followed her like a malicious apparition in the form of her classmates and teachers. She'd be in Geometry and would spend the whole forty-two minute period trying not to die from the nails-scratching-against-a-chalkboard sound the teacher made whenever he dragged a marker down the whiteboard, because of _fucking metal armplates_.

Who the fuck needed metal armplates?

No one, that's who.

The cafeteria was an absolute nightmare, as it was pretty much a goddamn warzone. Food would be flying everywhere, the force behind the fling only exacerbated by artificially increased strength from grafted metal arms. Daddy's little rich girl would be talking animatedly about her lastest exploits with her boyfriend and dear Jesus, those specially customized boots and gloves that were all the rage in the moment would be _clicking, clicking, clicking_ from some mechanism that did who-knows-what-shit inside them. Perhaps it allowed the bitch to fly.

Anna asked for earplugs on her fifteenth birthday, just a set of some good earplugs, but didn't end up receiving them, because apparently, they were in short demand.

_I wonder why._

**...**

"Elsa," a Medic buzzed one day when she was still recovering in the hospital.

She only blinked languidly at him, shifting underneath her blankets and trying to get used to the absent feeling in her right side, the one that was there...yet wasn't, at the same time.

"My name is Fjoldr," the man snapped, his faceplate glowing with a blood-red light while he clanked around Elsa's hospital bed. "I am here to inform you that have been selected for a prestigious program within the state military."

Elsa stared.

Fjoldr got right to the point.

"You have a power."

"A power," she repeated absently.

"A power, yes," Fjoldr whispered. "You have been granted a great gift." He pointed at her right arm, and she unwillingly held it up, wincing at the strange feeling it procured.

Holding her pseudo-hand in his own, watching the center of her metal palm glow a cold arctic blue, the radiance reflected in the dark visor of his helmet.

When she finally spoke, Elsa's own voice trembled in sheer terror, her own eyes captivated by this—this unnatural _abnormality_ now entwined eternally with her flesh through titanium cables she can feel digging into her flesh, sliding in odd directions underneath her skin. "P-power?"

Without a sound, his metal-encased head shot up, and Elsa could practically see his eyes narrowing into slits beneath that falsely blank visor.

"Yes, girl." His voice was disapproving. His statement was followed by a pause, pregnant with tension and trembling with barely-controlled suspense, before he whispered, "Not everyone can contain it."

She sucked in a breath.

"Power...why so afraid of it?"

She tilted her head, biting her lower lip in consternation. A few moments of empty, empty silence that was not missed by neither party dominated the conversation before she spoke, "I'm _not_ afraid."

Fjoldr regarded her for a few more moments before turning away.

"An ability to create ice and snow," he eventually said, his voice a low rumble.

"...Cyrokinesis?" Elsa frowned, albeit in a detached manner, her brilliantly cobalt eyes becoming slightly unfocused as she lifted the thing, _it_—no, no, _her_ new hand.

(Actually, she meant _it.)_

Beneath his expressionless mask, Fjoldr's mouth twitched into a cruel smirk.

**...**

"Sector F," Fjoldr told her a week later, when he visited her again after the revelation about Elsa's cyrokinesis.

"What?" Elsa mumbled around a mouthful of mashed potato.

"You are to be transferred into Sector F," he snapped in his usual brusque manner, his metal fingers twitching by his side.

She swallowed her food. "I'm not sure what you mean."

"State military," he reminded her.

"But..." Elsa struggled to recall what little reading she did about the subject, "aren't there only five sectors? Up to E? There is no Sector _F."_

He turned his head at her, the faceplate in the center of the helmet still glowing a horrible bloody red.

"You're special, with your cyrokinesis."

She quirked an eyebrow when Fjoldr's hand landed on her shoulder.

"Frozen," he whispered.

**...**

From that point onward, when she receieved her new body part, Elsa always clanked when she walked.

(In other words, Elsa hated her birthdays with a burning passion.)

**/**

_next:_ [**FROM SHADOWS TO THE STARS**]


End file.
